During the winter of 1986-87, the upstairs rooms in the main
hotel building were rennovated. Formerly used as employee housing
(I lived up there for four seasons), the added guest capacity
made it necessary for the "bar" to be returned to its
original function as a dining room, and was renamed "the
petite dining room." The piano (after some discussion of
moving it into the main dining room) was moved out into what was
then called the "card room."

Actually, the room is where Estella Washburn had kept her
upright piano after she married John Washburn (one of the
builders of the hotel) in 1885; thus one of the Wawona's oldest
musical traditions has been restored in a round-about way. The
image above is a watercolor painting by my wife, Diane Detrick Bopp.